Ted Grant

Jan
Sling arrest—“Communist” Party apologies

The
following editorial appeared in the Morning
Star of January 21st
1972. We are quoting it in full for our readers to savour the full
flavour of the cringing and whimpering attitude of the Morning
Star and lest any naive member of the
Communist Party might accuse us of misquotation:

“Many
readers of the Morning
Star will feel a
special concern about the arrest of Jan Sling and his friend Jan Vik
in Prague, the latest in a series of arrests reported from
Czechoslovakia.

“His
mother, for many years an honoured member of the British party,
married Otto Sling when he was in Britain as a refugee from Hitler’s
fascism.

“He
was unjustly executed during a period when many communists in
Czechoslovakia and elsewhere were the victims of a policy which
tragically departed from communist principles.

“She
was herself imprisoned and now sees one of her sons arrested,
apparently because of protests he has made against the arrest of
others and disagreements he has expressed with the policies of the
Czechoslovak authorities to foreign journalists and a foreign radio
station.

“The
policy of trying to handle problems of dissent under socialism by
arrests and trials is not only regrettable and wrong, but
self-defeating.

“Further
information on the arrests will therefore be anxiously awaited.”

Criminal

There
have been many trials, some reported in the Morning
Star, which have provoked no comment from it.
One example was the shameful trial recently of Bukovsky in the Soviet
Union. He was sentenced to 12 years imprisonment for “illegal
anti-Soviet activity”. One point in the indictment was the alleged
“illegal” and “criminal” attempt to import a “printing
press”—in fact a duplicator!

The
Morning Star reported
this trial without comment as a news item. They reported also without
comment that foreign reporters, even their own, had not been allowed
to attend!

Bukovsky’s
great crime was the exposing of the infamous practice of the
Stalinist government in Russia of sending opponents and critics of
the regime to mental hospitals and “labour camps”, in real
language concentration camps or harsher internment camps than in
Northern Ireland.

Trials
“regrettable”

The
CP’s and the Morning Star’s
belated protests against the Czech regime’s arrest of Jan Sling,
nearly a quarter of a century after the Czech communists seized
power, is empty of content.

More
than 50 years after the revolution firmly abolished landlordism and
capitalism in Russia, such abominations are proof of the fact that
“socialism” does not yet exist in these countries.

The
very existence of the state, of “national states”, of antagonisms
and inequality between the people, the existence of poverty and even
still of hunger; the antagonisms and state barriers between Russia
and China, leading to armed clashes, the arrests and repression, are
proof that as under Stalin, socialism has not been achieved.

It
is no use the CP leaders in Britain wringing their hands and
complaining that trials are “regrettable and wrong and
self-defeating.” They are not self-defeating, but measures intended
to intimidate and threaten any opposition to the policies of the
ruling cliques. They are deliberate and calculated, if panicky,
measures, intended to frighten the intellectuals, workers and
peasants into passive submission to the economic and political
policies of these regimes.

As
with repression in capitalist countries, there must be a social
reason and a social need. If, after the denunciation of Stalin (in
the past, the CP leaders justified every crime committed by Stalin
and other Stalinist leaders in Eastern Europe as a “defence of
socialism”) the Russian and Eastern European CPs have turned, even
if in a milder fashion, to the methods of terror and repression, this
indicates that there is something fundamentally wrong. Something
which has not been corrected and cannot be corrected by the present
regimes.

Repression

It
is useless for the Morning Star,
like a maiden aunt tut-tutting
about the permissive society, genteelly “protesting” against this
repression, unless they explain the reasons for their recurrence
again and again.

They
are justly indignant at repression in capitalist countries which they
explain is the consequence of the defence of the interests of big
business. True, there are no landlords and capitalists in Eastern
Europe. But there are millions of bureaucrats, parasitically
battoning
on the workers and peasants. It is their interests which dictate a
one party totalitarian state, without control and management of
state-owned industry by the working class. This has nothing to do
with socialism. State ownership of the economy is the first step
towards socialism, but it is not socialism.

In
order to move towards socialism, it will require the overthrow of
these bureaucratic regimes, and the introduction of workers’
democracy. Then all parties and individuals, accepting the basis of
the regime, will be allowed freely to put forward their Ideas on how
society should be run.

Evasion
of duty

In
Russia, and the industrially advanced countries, even propagandists
for capitalism would be allowed. Industry is sufficiently advanced,
the power of the working class (now potentially) is so great that a
suggestion to return to landlordism and capitalism would be greeted
with laughter by the workers and peasants as absolutely ridiculous.
The repression now is against the workers and peasants, not against
privileged layers. It is the defence of the privileged against the
repressed.

To
talk about “socialism” under these conditions is to confuse the
working class, and to prevent them from understanding the causes and
solution of the problem of this repression, is the overthrow of the
bureaucratic regimes, and the introduction of workers’ democracy,
as in the days of Lenin and Trotsky.

The
Morning Star has made
the “record”. With hand to heart, CP leaders can say “We have
protested”. Though one note of criticism in the symphony of praise,
does not amount to much. It is intended as an insurance for the
future, when movements of protest develop in Eastern Europe. But it
is cowardly, and in fact, an evasion of the duty of any revolutionary
Marxist to tell the truth to the working class and picture things as
they are. The leadership of the CP cannot wriggle out of their
responsibility for crimes committed in the Soviet Union and Eastern
Europe by this faint whimper of ineffectual and unexplained
“protest.”